Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition

I just don't like it enough to learn all the numbers and stats and traits and spells. And unless you learn the ins and outs of the game you will be stuck playing on normal and still having hard time in at least some fights. Which is kinda good, but it doesn't feel satisfying like it would if I had put a lot of effort to learn it all. Main quest is interesting and a bit fresh compared to other fantasy titles, at least based on my experience. Side quests are also good, although, sometimes it feels like an obvious choice is missing from the possible outcomes. Visually it's very pleasing. Finally I'd like to add: This game has more reading then I expected, and I did expect there to be a lot of reading.

Somehow, this Game is brutally boring. I've spend the last Months playing all kind of RPGs, first Time Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale and also returned to Neverwinter Nights. So i wanted to give this Game a try, after i haven't got really warm with it a couple of Years ago. But hell, it is so boring, the Atmosphere, the Characters, the Music, it all depresses you and it is not trying to catch you up. The graphics are nice, i guess, it is everything so grey. It doesn't create a Feel of Danger or a World destroyed as in Fallout, it just gives you the Impression of a boring grey World. I am now trying to play a bit more (without Music).

Very much uncertain if I had to put 3 or 4 stars. What can I say...having known Obsidian since the Black Isle era, i had pretty high expectations from this PoE. I loved Baldur's Gate Saga, KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 + Mask of Betrayer and Fallout New Vegas. Well, I have to admit that said expectations were not totally met. Let me put it clear: it's a good game at all. Maps are delightful, combat system is OK for me, even XP system is not an issue, some enemies are quite a challenge and story is quite good. Quite. And here's the point. Sadly PoE can't put up a fight against masterpieces like KOTOR 2, Mask of Betrayer or Planescape Torment. Story is quite linear and the majority or NPCs are simply boring, save for a bit of 'em (the cleric Durance, the Grieving Mother and maybe Eder). I won't say it's boring, but I can't say I'm totally satisfied either. It's a good game from a company which until now made just masterworks...so it's a "downgrade" by Obsidian, IMHO.

I stopped playing the game after about 13 hours. There's just too much micro-management of me, and the manual pausing during combat is simply not my style. Since this game is based on the D&D combat system, I simply don't get why it had to be real-time. Had it been turn based, it would probably been so much better. Another thing this game fails to properly adapt from pen & paper RPGs is the proper complexity and reward of combat. In a proper P&P RPG, you have about ten combats per level, and the combats are complex, tactical, and take lots of time without getting boring. Here, combat is overly repetitive, which is made even worse by the fact that the combats don't last so long, meaning you have to repeat the exact same steps over and over again in rapid succession. Finally, the music. I will never understand how people can botch the music like this, when there are so many great examples to learn from. I eventually muted the music and replaced it with soudntrack from Monster Tale, which instantly made the game more playable for a couple of hours or so. Then the repetitiveness became too much for me. As a last note, it probably is not repetitiveness per se, but the specific kind of repetitiveness found in this game that kills it for me. I've played plenty of RPGs which had me do the same thing over and over again for a hunred hours without getting bored. I'll leave figuring out why this game fails to grip me like this to someone else. If you want to play a good RPG, I'd suggest looking at games like The Legend of Heroes instead.

My respect for the good will to create a decent clone of Baldur's Gate. Those who love a sheer endless world of the (in huge parts community-created) Baldur's Gate Trilogy will be disappointed by the missing depth and the tiny size of the PoE world as well as the missing opportunities to write great mods like "Shadows Over Soubar" or "The Dakest Day". We should not forget: It was the possibility to create (charge-)free community expansions which made Baldur's Gate a great game - not the plain vanilla versions, not additional commercial stuff. Nowadays, even simple tools like the IEmod were taken from the community and commercialised - fast money beats community interests. Not to speak about the idiotic proprietary file formats you can't get any information about, not to speak about the dull emphasis on strategy and micro-management, not to speak about annoying restrictions and counter-productive hard-coded rules (like being bound to an attacker coming too close while you attack with ranged weapons), et cetera. All in all: Maybe a great game for those who never played Ultima, Wizardry or BG, but at best an average game with conceptual flaws for senior RPG players like me (who still run a fully blown BGT installation...).